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China helps Nokia’s Ovi store to 1.6m app downloads every day

After a troubled start, Nokia’s Ovi store seems to be picking up steam. With a reported 1.6m downloads a day, the store is starting to show signs of strength in this competitive apps arena. The news arrives as Nokia launches a clutch of new phones designed with social messaging at its heart.

This good news from Nokia comes on the back of continued growth in the store, up 100,000 downloads a day from the beginning of March.

The global nature of the Ovi store, and increased personalization of the stores are what we believe to be the core drivers in this growth.

China is leading the way for the downloads, followed by Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UK & Vietnam. An interesting mix of markets and ones not necessarily well served by the more obvious app providers.

The range of phones supported in the Ovi store is also testament to its continued strength, with over 100 handsets, including 60 Symbian based smartphones currently supported.

Billing options are also helping this growth, with 80% of store purchases occurring in local currency. Where available 2/3 of all purchases are occurring through operator billing, a key factor the Windows 7 phone was hoping to capitalise on.

These figures are good. For some time I haven’t been convinced Nokia was still a player in this market. However, they have quietly got on with their store making it local and accessable from both the billing and the technology perspective.

The China card is set to be a very important one as we move forward. Already Nokia’s largest source of downloads, China offers rich pickings for those brave enough to get into the market. With Google’s Nexus One launch postponed (not to mention the whole Google China issue) and no official iPhone yet for China, Nokia has real potential to capitalise this market.